My Coloring Book Check List

Hi All, Yesterday I shared where the concept for my Coloring Book 5th Avenue came from. Today I wanted to share a list that detailed the steps of my process. In an effort to help you create your very own coloring book one day.

Come up with your coloring book idea! "Brainstorm"

Research Your Idea!

Gather all your research and paste it into a journal, include notes, facts, doodles,etc.

Look for Photo Reference ( follow copyright law) I'll get into this in a future post, but in general don't make your images look like the photo.

Doodle and Play with Reference, Style, and Composition which is the arrangement of it all.

Selected Final Sketches and Choose a size for your book, also make decide if your book will be a full bleed, which means that images go to the edges or will you crop your pages. If so find a free template online or make your own crop marks.

Create a Deadline and a plan at this stage. If you have 2 weeks and 12 images. Schedule 3 images a day for 4 days for example. That's what I did.

Keep to the plan, and make sure you block out time to do it.

After all the sketches are finished, it time to rework eat sketch even further. To tighten the quality. I know that this takes time, but edits, and changes are worth it. So spend another 2 weeks or what ever your schedule a lots for to make the edits, and changes to your images.

Then once this stage is over. I scheduled time to ink each image onto tracing paper.

After all the images are inked. It's time to place them into the scanner, and upload them into Photoshop. I scanned them at 300 dpi.

Once your images are in Photoshop it's time for more editing, and cleaning up your image. This too takes time, and it's worth it. So don't pull your hair out about it.

While your doing that work on other elements of your coloring book. My other elements we're the boarders, and the text. Follow the same process.

Once all edits we're made, print out a draft of your coloring book.

If you like it, your all set. If not go back and edit.

Once you've completed everything save as a PDF. You can choose to print single sided or double sided, but just made sure your grid lines are in the right place.